Its something that each of us devours,
Not just us but birds, beats, trees, and flowers,
Frets iron and nibbles steel,
Toil hard stones to meal,
Exterminates king, collapse town,
And blows the mountains down.
A tree doubled in height each year until it reached its maximum height over the course of ten years. How many years did it take for the tree to reach half its maximum height?
One night, a woman receives a call from the police. They tell her that her husband was murdered and that she should come to the crime scene as soon as possible. The woman drops the phone, shocked, and drives 20 minutes to the crime scene. As soon as she reaches the crime scene, the police arrest her and she is convicted of murder. How do the police know she committed the crime?
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.